When he disappeared in the Pacific Ocean, in one of the most remote quarters of the world, Mary R. Morgan's fantasy began.

It was a heroic dream of discovery, of reunion, and of mending that part of herself torn from her one morning in November 1961, when she was 23. Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson A. Rockefeller, then-governor of New York, disappeared off the coast of Dutch New Guinea, where the Harvard-trained anthropologist had been collecting oceanic art for a New York City museum.

Rockefeller was the youngest son of the New York governor, and the search for him, which made world-wide headlines, temporarily buoyed the hopes of Morgan, who accompanied her father to New Guinea to join the search. It took nearly three years for the state of New York to formally declare what Morgan had long feared: Michael Rockefeller had died by drowning.

The loss of a child and sibling has deep and lasting repercussions for any family, but for Morgan, the loss was especially deep: Michael Rockefeller was her twin. Earlier this year Morgan, now a psychotherapist in New York, released "Beginning With the End: A Memoir of Twin Loss and Healing," about which she will speak Thursday at the Gunn Memorial Library in Washington, Conn.

The story revolves around what Morgan calls her 27-year emotional denial of Michael's death and repression of her grief, which she says controlled her life and relationships.

"If (Michael) had definitively died, if my mother had not aborted the natural healing process, I think I would have healed much quicker," said Morgan in a telephone interview. In "Beginning With The End," Morgan recounts that when she returned home after the fruitless search for her brother in 1961, her mother embraced her and said, "You must get a hold of yourself Mary. The one thing we cannot do now is cry."

"She was devastated," Morgan said, "and I wonder if she didn't feel that if she started to cry, she wouldn't stop."

Months before Michael Rockefeller disappeared, Nelson Rockefeller and his wife had separated after 31 years of marriage. Two years later, Rockefeller would go on to marry the recently divorced Margaretta Fitler (Happy) Murphy, who had four children.

In "Beginning With the End," Morgan writes of her mother at that time, "The terrible pain she must have endured ... a nd the loss of both her husband and youngest son at the time were not voiced. Our wounds occupied an unacknowledged and unexpressed space between us."

Morgan writes that the repression of her feelings that she experienced lasted nearly two decades. She later entered Columbia University School of Social Work to get a degree in clinical social work. After her 1988 graduation, she worked in a social service agency for a while and then started a private practice in 1992.

Morgan said she wrote the book in part as an extension of her work with what she calls "twinless twins," which began in the early 1990s when a man whose twin had been brutally murdered came to her for psychotherapy. "We had an extraordinary healing," she said.

When Morgan read about those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she noticed that one of the victims had been a twin. Morgan managed to contact the victim's brother and began to treat him. His wife, also a psychotherapist, asked Morgan if she would begin a group sessions with other twins who had lost their twin siblings.

"I realized that my gift was to be their therapist," Morgan said, noting that when she first began treating them, "A whole piece of me wanted to sit down on the floor and just share my twin story with them."

Morgan said 46 twins lost their twin siblings in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"The twin bond ... actually begins in the womb because twins as little embryos are developing in connection with each other, in relationship," she said. "The new research is showing that these fetuses are reaching out to one another in primitive connection at just 14 weeks of age. so, by the time they're born, these twins are bonding. their individuality, the 'I' that's developing, is developing in the framework of 'we.'"

Morgan said that once she realized the depth of the twin bond, she better understood the depth of her loss.

Being a Rockefeller, she said, made the process of discovery more difficult. "When my father was in the news all the time, people met you and projected their feelings on to you." She and her brother, she said, "used to have great conversations of how we could become our own people and find experiences and where they've never heard of the word Rockefeller."

"Beginning With the End" recounts her journey into the work of Carl Jung and others, which she said help her grieve the loss of her brother. "I've been a fighter for most of my life," she said. "I don't give up easily. I've always been interested in the underdog. Between those things, I persevered."

If you go

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BEGINNING WITH THE END: A Memoir of Twin Loss and Healing (Vantage Point; $24.95 hardcover)

Gunn Memorial Library hosts Mary R. Morgan, Author of "Beginning with the End: A Memoir of Twin Loss and Healing"

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Outdoors

The day before superstorm Sandy came calling, I delivered some camping stuff to a site about a mile into the woods. Instead of taking the usual path, which I could almost follow by feel, I decided to wander in by a different route, just to see what might have happened since I was there last.